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The Rifts
About Rifts: Rifts are tunnels into The Plane of the Mirrored Sky, a parallel dimension thick with mystic power and frightening creatures. While the brave heroes who had discovered the cure for the Rift Curse had managed to stop new tears from forming, at the start of The Second Era, over 1000 Rifts were still polluting the land that belonged to the former Kingdom of O’Sine. How to close a tear: Rift tears are sealed by placing a very special spell "undoing" the creature whose power is keeping them open. Usually, the more powerful the creature, the larger the Rift. To close one without costing an adventurer their life, portal beacons are placed at intervals inside the Rift. When the creature is destroyed with the undoing spell, the edges of the Rift begin to seal themselves up, silver mana at the Rift's edges literally being sucked into the creature. The portal beacons are crucial for the fast travel required to send adventurers out of the Rift before it closes. Rift tears were categorized into five types: * Little Rifts: Usually ones that had formed in dark corners around the land, but had thankfully not grown large enough to let larger Rift creatures through. Unfortunately, they are usually only closeable by accident. As they are too small to travel through themselves, a proper sealing requires adventurers to travel through a different Rift and find the creature keeping a Little Rift open. Sometimes a Little Rift will grow into an Entry Rift or more, but it is a rare occurrence. It’s theorized that it’s because these little tears open up to incredibly far-flung and unpopulated parts of The Void. Little Rifts are documented as they are come across, but not counted officially. * Fledgling Rift: A Rift large enough to enter, but not large enough to be attached to a creature of significant power. A small team of trained adventurers could usually expect to close one of these in about a week and transfer out immediately with a small portal beacon. There were 176 such Rifts in Grayswallow documented at the start of the Restoration. While most of them were closed, some of them later fell under government control and became used as training grounds. * Central Rift: A Rift large enough to let more dangerous creatures through. It is priority for adventurers to close them as they pose a threat to villages trying to establish in the area. Generally, it is controlled by a lower intelligence, but powerful beast. They have usually claimed the lives of several careless adventurers in the past, but can ostensibly be closed by a singular group. There were 300 such Rifts in Grayswallow documented at the start of the Restoration. * Wasting Rift: A Rift so large that settlement of the area surrounding it is impossible. Adventurers soon learned that these are controlled by sentient and highly intelligent Rift beings. These have only been closed after months-long campaigns by several groups of adventurers. Often, just the process of entering these Rifts can take time and effort, and even lower ranking groups of adventurers are called in to help clear the way. There were 48 such Rifts in Grayswallow documented at the start of the Restoration. * Epic Rift: A Rift that is large enough to require an army to close it. Controlled by Void dragons or creatures of similar power. There were 4 Rifts documented at the start of the Restoration.